country, gradually finds its way through the limestone rocks and
eventually comes out here. It would be interesting to trace the course
of some of these underground rivers; for a torrent of water such as this
cannot flow down through the soft rock without in the course of
thousands of years, producing caves and grottoes and underground
galleries and all the wonders of the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, with its
stalactite pillars and fairy avenues and domes--though the Cotswold
caves are naturally on a much smaller scale. At Torquay and on the
Mendip Hills, as everybody knows, there are caves of wondrous beauty,
carved by the water within the living rock.

Probably within a hundred yards of Bibury spring there are beautiful
hidden caves, such as those funny little "palaeolithic" men lived in a
few thousand years ago; but why there have not been more discoveries of
this nature in this part of the Cotswolds it is difficult to say. There
is a cave hereabouts, men say, but the entrance to it cannot now be
found. There is likewise a Roman villa on the hill here which has not
yet been dug out of its earthy bed. A hundred years ago a large number
of Roman antiquities were discovered near this village.

We now leave Bibury behind us, and a mile on we pass through the hamlet
of Ablington, which is very like Bibury on a smaller scale, with its
ancient cottages, tithe barns and manor house; its springs of
transparent water, its brook, and wealth of fine old trees. We have no
time to linger in this hamlet to-day, though we would fain pause to
admire the old house.

"The pillar'd porch, elaborately embossed;
The low, wide windows with their mullions old;
The cornice richly fretted of grey stone;
And that smooth slope from which the dwelling rose
By beds and banks Arcadian of gay flowers,
And flowering shrubs, protected and adorned."

WORDSWORTH

After leaving Ablington we once more ascend the hill and make our way
along an old, disused road, probably an ancient British track, in
preference to keeping to the highway--in the first place because it is
by far the shortest, and secondly because we intend to go somewhat out
of our way to inspect two ancient barrows, the resting-place of the
chiefs of old, of whom Ossian (or was it Macpherson?)[5] sang: "If fall
I must in the field, raise high my grave. Grey stones and heaped-up
earth shall mark me to future times. When the hunter shall sit